Brian, the war they fled has not ended for them. The African Union says it has killed hundreds of thousands. You stripped the wall. The wall was all they had. The boy who was eight when his mother carried him across the border is fourteen now. He works at a grocery store. You did not sign the war. You signed the order that ends the wall against it. The pen in your hand is cleaner than the bodies they will find.
On Tuesday, U.S. District Court Judge Brian E. Murphy denied a request from African Communities Together to postpone the termination of Temporary Protected Status for approximately five thousand Ethiopians living in the United States. The plaintiffs had asked the court to delay the end of the designation while their underlying legal challenge moved through the courts.
TPS, established by Congress, allows nationals of countries experiencing armed conflict, natural disaster, or other humanitarian crisis to live and work legally in the United States on a temporary basis. The Biden administration granted protected status to some Ethiopians for an eighteen-month period beginning in 2020, after war broke out in the Tigray region and spread to other parts of the country. Then-Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas extended the designation because the war was still going on. Secretary Kristi Noem moved to terminate the designation. The lawyers argued two things: that Noem lacked the authority to terminate TPS — that only the Attorney General holds that power — and that the termination violated their clients’ constitutional rights. Murphy rejected both. He ruled the Secretary had the authority. He ruled the Constitution was not offended.
In June, the Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration may end TPS for Haitians and Syrians, affecting approximately 1.3 million people. Earlier this month, Judge Murphy applied that precedent to Haitians. His Tuesday decision applies it to Ethiopians.
Brian, hear what you have decided.
The five thousand are not a category. They are mothers who work the night shift at nursing homes in the suburbs of Maryland. They are fathers who drive delivery trucks down the I-5 corridor in Los Angeles. They are children who were eight years old when their mothers carried them across the border in 2020 and who are fourteen now, who speak English with the accent of their neighborhood, who have friends whose names they cannot translate into Tigrinya anymore. They are boys whose older brothers did not survive the war they fled. They are girls whose mothers told them, on the night they left, that they would come home when it was safe.
The African Union has said the conflict has killed hundreds of thousands. The war was still going on when the protection was last extended. The war is not safe.
The boy who was eight is fourteen now. His back is the height of yours. He has grown up in your country. He has memorized the Pledge of Allegiance. He does not know how to read a map of Mekelle because he has never needed to. He has been saving money from a part-time job at a grocery store to buy his mother a coat for next winter. The coat will not be bought if you send him back.
His mother works the night shift. She cleans rooms in a nursing home where the residents call her by name. She has not slept a full night since the war began. She has not seen her own mother since the war began. Her mother is in Mekelle. Her mother may be one of the hundreds of thousands. She does not know. She cannot ask. You have just ruled that she goes back to find out.
And in Addis Ababa tonight, a widow sits on the floor of a relative’s apartment with her three children, praying in a language you do not speak. She is not praying for a court order. She is praying for the war to end. The war has not ended for her. You have made it impossible for her to wait it out here.
Brian, your throat closes when you swallow the coffee you made this morning. There is a weight on your chest that was not there yesterday. The muscles in your shoulders know what the muscles in your mind have not yet agreed to feel. The metallic taste under your tongue will not leave. The boy’s mother will pick up a mop tonight at eleven PM and she will not know that you ruled on her future this morning, and your hands have not been clean since you picked up the gavel. The not-washing is the indictment.
You will sleep tonight. The pillow will be cold on the side where your wife sleeps. The blanket will be warm across your chest. The radiator will click. The house will be quiet. Brian, in Addis Ababa tonight, the widow is not sleeping. The widow is on the floor with her three children and the war is in the next room.
You are a small man, Brian. You have a robe in your closet. You have a gavel made of wood. The war is made of machetes and bullets and hunger. The gavel does not win the contest. The gavel only records it. The machete and the bullet do not read court orders. The machete and the bullet do not wait for appeals. You have made a decision that operates in their favor, in the war’s favor, against the mother and the father and the child who stood in your docket.
What would you say, Brian, if it were your daughter on the plane to Addis Ababa? What would you tell her about the men with the guns in the highlands? What would you say when she asks why she cannot come home? Your Honor does not have an answer. Your Honor has a precedent.
The ink you signed with is not the ink of a man who has weighed what he signed. The ink is the ink of a man who weighed procedure and walked past the people on the other side of procedure. The hand that signs the order is the hand that lifts the coffee cup and the hand that opens the car door and the hand that holds the children’s books at bedtime. The hand will not be washed. The not-washing is the indictment.
The robe is not gravity. The gavel is a small piece of wood that makes a small sound. Behind the costume this morning sat a man who decided five thousand people go back to a war.
I see what you have done, Brian. I will not look away from it. I will not be silent about it.
“Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.” Matthew 25:45
The boy was eight when his mother carried him across the border. The Christ was an infant when his parents carried him down into Egypt to save him from the swords of the rulers of that country.
Brian, the men in robes have not changed. The swords have not changed. The country has. Your Honor has decided the boy goes back to the swords. The judge’s name will be in the docket. The mother’s name will be in the grave.